2024 Mets Minors Top Prospects: No. 3 Luisangel Acuña

No. 3: Luisangel Acuña, INF

B/T: R/R      Age: 22 (03/12/02)
Ht: 5’8″        Weight: 181 lbs
Acquired: Dealt to the Mets from the Rangers in the 2023 Max Scherzer trtade.
ETA: 2025   Previous Rank: NA
2023 Stats: 121 G, .294/.359/.410/.769, 9 HR, 150 H, 63 RBIs, 57 SB
2024 Stats: 36 G, .227/.279/.331/.610, 2 HR, 35 H, 11 RBIs, 13 SB

Acuña, brother of Braves superstar Ronald Acuña Jr., was the piece the Mets acquired for Max Scherzer at the trade deadline in 2023. He’s played most of his minor league innings at shortstop, though he’s played a substantial amount of second base as well and has dabbled in center field a bit. Given his short stature (plus the presence of Francisco Lindor), he might be better suited for second base when he arrives in the majors. But he provides a ton of speed, plus solid on-base and contact skills that have continued to develop.

At the time Acuña joined the Mets organization, he was having a strong season for Double-A Frisco with a .315/.377/.453 line in 84 games. It’s worth noting that his BABIP was an unsustainable .381.

He put up a much more moderate performance in his first taste of the Mets’ system, hitting .243/.317/.304/.621 in 37 games with Binghamton to close out the 2023 season. His BABIP fell to .288. His ISO also fell, from .138 to .061, though his strikeout and walk rates stayed about the same, hovering around the 18% and 9% marks, respectively, with both organizations.

Still, Acuña’s performance gave the Mets enough confidence to start him at Triple-A Syracuse this year. Over roughly a season and a half at the Double-A level, he batted .278 with a .742 OPS.

His first stretch at the Triple-A level didn’t go well. On April 18, he was batting only .197/.234/.279. He slowly heated up towards the end of April, though on May 1, he still had an underwhelming .216/.266/.353 line.

Acuña then went on a 10-game hitting streak. Though strangely, his average only rose to .232 over that span, and his slugging percentage actually fell 15 points, to .338. In six of the 10 games, he only went 1-for-5, so it was peculiar in that he maintained a hitting streak while not necessarily being red-hot at the plate. His best performance amidst the stretch was on May 10, when he went 3-for-6 with a double. It was his second three-hit game of the season.

Overall, Acuña is still having his weakest offensive season at the highest level of baseball he’s played in. There’s obviously a lot of time left, with the season only a little more than a month old. However, it is slightly concerning that Acuña’s BB/K ratio is at a career-low 0.29, fueled by a career-worst 6.1% walk rate. Acuña is somebody who’s only posted ISO marks around .100 in his career, so it leaves him with an offensive profile that has a bit to be desired.

Still, it’s not all doom and gloom. He’s relatively young at 22, and he’s posted a career .283 average and .361 OBP in the minors. Plus, this is the first chance he’s gotten at the Triple-A level, so it’s not too surprising for there to be an adjustment period that goes along with that. He struggled in his first bit of Double-A action, too, over 37 games in 2022. That’s a similar sample size to the run he’s gotten in Triple-A so far this year. He came back to boost his average and OPS by nearly 200 points each during the following season in Double-A, so it’s too early to just concede that Acuña will stay at this level of production in Triple-A.

At his best, Acuña could be somebody who brings a high-.200s average with strong on-base skills and fantastic speed to a middle infield position. He’s not going to hit a ton of home runs; he has only two this year and 36 over parts of six minor league seasons. Still, he swatted 12 in Single-A in 2021, 11 in 2022 and nine in 2023, so he’s not solely a slap hitter, either. That could make for a very valuable asset at the major league level, if not necessarily a star like his brother. Any power he can provide is more of a bonus to his primary skills: getting on base, playing up-the-middle defense and stealing bases.

That’s another huge part of his game—he’s stolen a whopping 171 bases in the minors, compared to only 39 times getting caught. For reference, he’s walked 196 times, so he steals nearly as often as he walks (and his career walk percentage is a respectable 10.5%). He stole 57 bases in 2023, and has 13 so far this year. The relative lack of extra-base hits could be somewhat offset by the amount of extra bases he gives a team by simply stealing them.

2024 Outlook

How Acuña continues to develop at the plate should be an interesting storyline to follow for the rest of 2024. He needs to get his walk rate back up; it’s steadily declined throughout his career, going from double digits in the low minors, to roughly 9% last year, to 6% this year. His power output is about in line with his career norms, so that isn’t necessarily the biggest issue right now, but hitting in the low .200s with limited walking or power-hitting ability isn’t going to fly.

It will be critical to watch where his numbers trend as he gets more comfortable in Triple-A. It should be easier to make a fuller judgment, too, on what his future holds once he has a complete sample size of Triple-A at-bats under his belt.

PREVIOUS RANKINGS

• • No. 4 – Ryan Clifford
  • No. 5 – Christian Scott
  • No. 6 – Marco Vargas
  • No.7 – Ronny Mauricio
  • No.8- Kevin Parada
  • No.9 – Jeremy Rodríguez 
  • No. 10 – Mike Vasil
  • No. 11 – Colin Houck
  • No. 12 – Blade Tidwell
  • No. 13 – Yovanny Rodriguez
  • No. 14 – Dom Hamel
  • No. 15 – Brandon Sproat
  • No. 16—Jacob Reimer
  • No. 17—Jesus Baez
  • No. 18—Boston Baro
  • No. 19—Ronald Hernandez
  • No. 20—Alex Ramírez
  • No. 21-25
  • No. 26-30

The post 2024 Mets Minors Top Prospects: No. 3 Luisangel Acuña appeared first on Metsmerized Online.